Former Galante accountant Rayner pleads guilty

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT), Ethan Fry Staff Writer

Published
1:00 am EDT, Thursday, August 28, 2008

NEW HAVEN - The accountant who federal authorities said cooked the books for James Galante's corrupt trash empire will face up to 51 months behind bars after he pleaded guilty in the case today in U.S. District Court.

, who now lives in Wilmington, N.C., pleaded guilty before Judge
Ellen Bree Burns
to racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the
IRS
.

Rayner's pleas Thursday leave only one defendant who hasn't pleaded guilty in the federal probe of trash hauling in the region.
Paul Galietti
, a state trooper and a cousin of Galante's former lead salesman, is charged with accessing state police computers to obtain motor vehicle registration information and giving it to participants in the garbage scheme.

In court Thursday, Rayner stood before Burns and, with a series of replies that rarely varied from "Yes, your honor" and "No, your honor," admitted to taking part in the "property rights system" that Galante and others used "to control the trash industry in western Connecticut and eastern New York," Assistant U.S. Attorney
Raymond Miller
said in court.

"Mr. Rayner knew what [the property rights system] was, how it operated, who the parties were and how it related to organized crime," Miller said.

Specifically, Miller said, Rayner in 2005 personally took part in the attempted bid-rigging of the operation of a Connecticut transfer station by meeting with a Stamford-based trash carter and telling the carter what to bid on the project to ensure the company backed by Galante would win it.

The Stamford carter told Rayner he wasn't even on planning to bid on the project, Miller said, but the scheme fell apart anyway when another company won the bid.

Miller said that after the bids came in, an individual from the winning company later told Ciero Viento, then the operations manager at Automated Waste Disposal and one of the co-conspirators in the case, that "you didn't tell me 'til late that you owned it ... I didn't have a chance to put the snuff on it before the bid went in."

Miller said the wire fraud charge stemmed from Galante's ownership of the Danbury Trashers minor league hockey team. Though the league had a $275,000 annual salary cap, Miller said, Rayner admitted helping to place several of the league's players on the payrolls of various trash hauling companies in "no-show" jobs.

League rules mandated team owners to send a weekly salary report to the league's offices in Iowa, Miller said, and during the course of the 2004-05 season the team sent 30 such reports with incorrect information on them.

In addition to the no-show jobs, Miller said, some players received cash bonuses or double housing allowance payments, causing the team's payroll to be over the league salary cap to the tune of $475,000.

With respect to tax fraud charge, Miller said Rayner took part in filing several inaccurate tax returns both for trash companies affiliated with Galante and Galante's personal tax returns, in some cases signing off on them as having prepared them. Some of the returns, Miller said, contained deductions for no-show employees' salaries, health care costs and other expenses.

After Miller summarized the charges Rayner pleaded guilty to, Burns asked Rayner if there was anything Miller said he would challenge or dispute. "No, your honor," he replied.

The judge then slated Rayner's sentencing for 9 a.m. on Nov. 14.

In accordance with a plea deal between federal prosecutors and Rayner's lawyer,
Ross Garber
, Rayner will face between 37 and 51 months behind bars, depending on how Burns calculates the applicable federal sentencing guidelines.

Rayner also agreed to forfeit $150,000 to the government as part of the deal and comply with state and federal tax authorities.